The Journey So Far

A chronological stroll thru the history of Broadway Musicals as they came to be recorded by Hollywood--the summation of a lifelong vocation, and a journey of self discovery. Equal parts cultural history, critique and personal memoir. Comingnext: Jersey Boys

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Lost in the Stars

May 6,
1974 American Film Theater 97 minutes

Even as American theater's cultural influence was in
decline as a popular art, a TV & documentary producer named Ely Landau made
the audacious move of founding a new production company to make movies of
revered and important plays that had been neglected by Hlwd and cinema in
general. Instead of commercial release, these films played abbreviated runs in
major cities for audiences of subscribers. Eight titles were offered the first
"season" and six the second and last--coming along once a month.
Among intriguing and well-deserved selections such as O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Albee's A Delicate Balance Pinter's Homecoming, and Ionesco's Rhinoceros, was one musical play: Maxwell
Anderson & Kurt Weill's Lost in the
Stars.

The show was a succes
d'estime on Bway in late 1949, but not one that was picked up for tents or
tours.Based on a then contemporary
South African novel by Alan Paton, Cry, the
Beloved Country; its theme of race relations had as much relevance for
Americans, tho this South African variation had its own unique exoticism. Most
significantly it was the final Bway show for the eclectic Weill--whose
premature death at age 50 deprived us of untold works during Bway's blossoming
Golden Years. Especially in light of his output thru the '40s, both prolific
and fascinating: starting with Lady in the Dark in '41, which was as
weird as it was engaging, followed by One Touch of Venus in '43, Weill revealed
a light Bway populist touch, that somehow maintained his Teutonic flavor and
classical sophistication. Both were hits and both were made in Hlwd, in virtually
unrecognizable form (as was an earlier tuner, Knickerbocker Holiday from '36, that was also written with Maxwell
Anderson.) Weill was little respected in Hlwd. An ill-timed operetta, The Firebrand of Florence, followed on
Bway as WWII was ending in '45, and was so quickly forgotten it took many
decades to be exhumed--if only for academic purposes (tho Weill's score is
lovely). An ambitious American opera, Street
Scene in '47 was Weill's bid to push past Gershwin's pathway--and found its way into the
opera canon. Love Life in '48, in
collaboration with Alan Jay Lerner was as much a early concept musical as
R&H's Allegro. The same could be
said of Lost in the Stars, which followed
a year later. These were all dense, thoughtfully constructed musicals as
boundary-stretching and intellectually challenging as Sondheim's. Yet each,
with its own flaws, has just survived on academic fumes, not timeless artistry
(as in Weill's Threepenny Opera). Had
he continued composing thru the R&H era, there's little doubt Weill would
be as much a giant of the American musical. Who knows what he might have made
of Huckleberry Finn--which he'd begun
just prior to his death.

I never paid much creed to Lost in the Stars in my Bway education; one of those shows
preserved with compromised recordings from the '40s, which my '60s-trained
listening ear had little patience for in my younger years. And despite its beyond-glamorous
title it somehow emited the aura of tragedy & gloom that didn't draw my
interest--I got enuf of that from my parents--and the very reason I turned to
Musical Comedy as my savior. But then no one has explained the show as well as
Ethan Mordden. in his '40s volume, Beautiful
Mornin'. Maxwell Anderson viewed it as a play with songs and wrote it as
such, incoporating a mixed-race chorus narrating the story while remaining
outside it. (The sort of thing that was still "new" 20 years later
when Harold Prince did it in Zorba.)
But Anderson's
verbose adaptation of Alan Paton's narrative is more literary than dramatic,
and it is Weill's score (much briefer than his recent standard) that breathes
any life into the show. Yet there's not enuf music to justify the piece as the
opera it should've been. Rouben Mamoulian directed it on Bway--a distinctive
thru-line for the man who first staged game-changers like Porgy&Bess, Oklahoma! and Carousel. But Lost in the
Stars has never taken hold in the repertory. An attempt to remedy this was
a '72 revival, initiated at KennedyCenter that was brought
to Bway for a painfully brief run. This may have well sparked Ely Landau and the
board of American Film Theater to select it as one of their inaugural movies.
And to emphasize that these were real movies, not filmed stage plays,
established if unexpected film directors were chosen: John Frankenheimer, Guy
Green, Tony Richardson. Daniel Mann was a twenty year veteran of of TV dramas
and mid-range studio films, some adapted from Bway plays. (He's mentioned in
Comden & Green's "Drop That Name" lyric from Bells Are Ringing: "Daniel Mann/and Lynn Fontanne/Elia
Kazan/the former Grace Kelly...") His being named director of Lost in the Stars was neither unexpected
nor inspired. He's not particularly clever in designing the musical sequences,
nor does he embarrass himself. But some dramatic scenes are surprisingly flat,
given that this was Mann's specialty.

On Bway, the original Porgy, Todd Duncan was thought too
lightweight in the role of Stephen Kumalo which was conceived for Paul Robeson,
who declined. Brock Peters was more successful in the revival (receiving a Tony
nomination a year after the fact) and thus offered the movie. The casting in
general is quite good.

Playing Kumalo's errant son, Absalom, is Clifton Davis,
proving himself every bit as charismatic as he was on Bway in Two Gentlemen of Verona. And Melba
Moore, the too-brief Bway sensation (Hair,
Purlie) gives a gut-wrenching performance as Irina, Absalom's pregnant and
abandoned woman, with a hair-raising "TroubleMan."
I have mixed feelings about Brock Peters, tho I suspect these are clouded by my
distaste for his character. Straight-laced ministers make unappealing
protagonists (as Tenderloin and Sadie Thompson also proved). And as seen
here, Kumalo is rather dimly naive and a blundering ass at times (calling Irina
a whore; begging for leniency for his son, from the father of the murdered man).
Peters was a powerful. charismatic heavy in the films of Carmen Jones and Porgy &
Bess., but I find him less effective here.

The movie is quite strange and off-puting but upon my
third viewing I began to get into it. It does have its unique South African
milieu (tho it states "filmed on location," we don't quite know
where). The musical's opening is a descriptive passage from the novel made into
choral narration; but played over the images it describes--aside from
overstating the obvious--is rather banal. Whatsmore, the helicopter shots have
none of the intended impact (i.e. Sound
of Music). The song begins, "There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo
into the hills/These hills are grass-covered and rolling and they are lovely
beyond any singing of it"--and yet they are singing of it; the song devolving
into a depressing litany decrying a neighboring barren region. You're ready to
slash your wrists and we haven't even met the characters yet. And it must also
be said that the clash of musical sensibilities--a Germanic flavored Africanism--is
more readily accepted on the opera stage than in the realism of cinema. The
show's choral numbers are heard over story montages; effective in Kumalo's
search for his son in "Thousands of Miles" (shot thru the streets of
Johannesburg) but ridiculous in "Fear," which has blacks & whites
alike, running (to or from what we do
not see) in panic--looking more like a '50s sci-fi horror flick. "Cry the
Beloved Country" which sounds like a gallows march and amounts to a second
title tune is bizarrely juxtaposed on a crowded courtroom as it thoroughly
empties, and lingers for half a minute longer. And then it shifts to prison; a
chorus of convicts continue the song a
capella for a truly arresting--albeit too brief--moment. The most radical
change to the score, happily takes away a child's song, "Big Mole"
and reimagines it for a sultry barroom flirtation dance. Staged and performed
by Paula Kelly, the piece (which has the composition and lighting of a
Mamoulian film) is the movie's highlight.

Kelly, who was rendered invisible
next to Shirley MacLaine & Chita Rivera in Sweet Charity, proves herself worthy of attention; not just for her
moves but for the distinctively African feel of her choreography--nothing else is
as musically indigenous in the movie. Otherwise each character's arias are unadorned,
shot like stage performances: Brock's "Little Gray House" and
"Lost in the Stars"--filmed in a JoBurg chapel; Melba's sweet
"Stay Well" and shattering "Trouble Man;" Clifton's positively operatic, "O, Tixo,
Tixo, Help Me." Perhaps the best realized song cinematically is "The
Train to Johannesburg,"
which is sung "live" by the Zulus as opposed to an unseen chorus on
the soundtrack; and filmed with some camera movement. The native dress (i.e. costumes)
of the Zulus are striking and defining.

Alfred Hayes' screenplay pares down a lot of Anderson's verbosity (the
film runs a brisk 97 minutes) but adds little eloquence to Cry, the Beloved Country. Once Absolom is convicted, the film runs
straight downhill. Kumalo loses his faith in God, shoos away his parishioners
and climbs a mountain to grieve the moment of his son's execution in the far
off City. The story makes much of blaming Gold and the rise of The City for all
the evil in the world. And at the very bell toll signifying the hour of
Absalom's hanging, as Kumalo grabs hold his own neck in utter anguish, the
movie ends. Just like that. No solace here. Wasn't there some possible
redemption?--some crumb of hope ahead, with the addition of Kumalo's nephew,
Alex, and Absalom's wife, soon to be mother--all to be safely reared in the
country? Not a chance. It's grim beyond relief. They did first call it a musical
tragedy after all. As an Addams I
should love it--but then I'm the blonde sheep of the family.

Tho I frequently went to films and theater in 1974, the
subscription policy of American Film Theater kept me from attending their films.
Lost in the Stars played the Zeigfeld
Theater for two nights, beginiing May 6. This house would serve a more exciting
event later that same month with the unveiling of MGM's breathtaking
compilation of treasures, That's
Entertainment--most of which were still new to me then. In short order the Museum of Modern Art curated a lengthy
retrospective of MGM films, including many musicals I'd never been privileged
to see (The Bandwagon, Show Boat, The
Pirate). It seems so quaint to remember a time when one had to rely on the
randomness of repertory film houses to catch an old movie one had only read
about. MOMA was as nice a place to attend such "private screenings,"
as anyone could want. It was a real Manhattan
crowd; and one always got to run up and gaze at Picasso's Guernica
and other iconic works by Matisse or Magritte when one was a member; which even
I could afford to become. While I continued on as a Brentano's salesclerk,
Bill--who was not retained after Xmas help--had stumbled into a temp job on Wall St. that would
turn into a 25 year career--with an income that would always surpass mine. By
summer we yearned for independence from our separate but mutually cramped
quarters under the thumbs of Russian dowagers in Spanish Harlem. Stories of
apartment hunting in NY were legion, so we geared ourselves for months of searching.
And as we both were Real Estate fetishists since high school, we looked forward
to the dozens of tours ahead. In that
regard it was unfortunate, for we only saw one apartment, the first: 327 West 83rd St--just
off Riverside.; a lovely tree-lined block lined with brownstones and mid-size one-bedrooms,
sandwiched between fabled Pre-War apartment houses of 12 or 15 stories. It was immediately
clear this suited us perfectly; two rooms separated by a tiny kitchenette,
hall, closet & bath for $375 a month--rent that seems absurdly low now, but
even half of which I sometimes struggled to meet in 1975. I don't know how I
managed to get the bedroom, with its 5th floor Rear Window panorama, but it was
a dream come true and a happy relief from the depressingly drab confines of 141st St. Are there
many moments as exciting in a young man's life? As of September 1st I was
living on my own without my parents, without Baba. Just Bill & I, roomates
like Ruth & Eileen looking to make good in the BigCity.
We were Upper West Siders now. And I was happily--if you'll excuse the
expression--lost in the stars.

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About this Blog

At the intersection of Broadway and Hollywood,

the Musical has been my lifelong touchstone. How did this happen? What does it mean? Herewith an analysis of my own"glass menagerie;" a Proustian trail of memory and perhaps a final summation of my thoughts and feelings on this unrelenting vocation.

About Me

A man on the verge of a musical breakdown. Why did I do it? What did it get me? Scrapbooks full of me in the background: New York, Hollywood, San Francisco. Palm Springs. This time, boys, I'm takin' the bows.